The Patterson City Council approved City Attorney Tom Hallinan’s response to the Stanislaus County Civil Grand Jury report accusing city administration and elected officials of mishandling various aspects of a purchase of a 100-year-old building Tuesday night.
The response, which disagrees with the grand jury’s findings that state that the city violated the Brown Act or showed a lack of due diligence, earned a 4-1 approval. Councilmember Sheree Lustgarten provided the dissenting vote and a letter of her own.
Previously, a 2013-14 grand jury report also accused the city of disregarding the Brown Act. In last year’s approved response, the city stated that they wholly disagreed with that report as well.
“This is déjà vu all over again,” Hallinan said. “In short, we disagree with their allegations regarding Brown Act violations, and we substantially complied with all procedures relating to the purchase. But that’s not to comment on whether it ended up being a good deal or not.”
The city purchased the property, located at 21/25 South Del Puerto Ave., for $650,000 with the intent of creating a City Hall annex building. The vision was to promote Patterson’s cultural and economic interests and provide space for the Patterson-Westley Chamber of Commerce, the local historical society and other organizations.
But it was only after the purchase was complete that the city realized the building required extensive upgrades and repairs. “By failing to conduct the necessary studies and inspections, the city has purchased a building that will require an estimated $2.4 million of improvement/replacement costs in order to be brought up to commercial code requirements,” reads the 2014-15 civil grand jury report.
Hallinan claimed that the city complied with all legal requirements in the purchase.
“The grand jury, I think their charge should be to look at the legality,” Hallinan said. “And the base questions are: Did we violate the Brown Act? The answer is no. Did we substantially comply with purchase procedures? Yes. Didn’t turn out the way we wanted in the end with the inspections that we had, but that’s really a separate issue from the grand jury’s charge as I see it.”
Now approved, Hallinan’s response represents the City Council, the mayor and the city manager. That is, without the support of one council member.
Councilwoman acts alone in drafting dissent
In addition to voting against the city’s grand jury response, Lustgarten revealed one of her own.
“What I’d like to read into the record is a letter that I intend to send to the grand jury as my response,” she said. “I strongly disagree with the multiple elements of the response prepared by the Patterson city attorney Tom Hallinan and as such want to take the opportunity to make you and the civil grand jury fully aware of those objections.”
For 19 minutes, the councilwoman read through her entire response, stating each finding of the grand jury report and her agreement with them.
“I strongly believe that this mammoth waste of taxpayer dollars was entirely avoidable had the 2012 Patterson City Council been more forthright in its decision making and had insisted upon proper due diligence prior to the city assuming ownership of the 21/25 South Del Puerto Ave. building,” she said.
Lustgarten’s colleagues were unaware that she had prepared the letter.
“This will never happen again under my watch,” Mayor Luis Molina said. “I think it was a disrespect of personal courtesy and professional courtesy to not allow this council, the city manager, staff, the city attorneys the courtesy of providing that document prior.”
“I’m very disappointed,” he continued. “I’m not sure the actual motivation for this display. … In our discussion about this, I don’t think the 15-minute-plus, 4-5 page opinion did anything to resolve what the response was written to be.”
Lustgarten repeatedly brought up in her response to the grand jury that she believes the city should adopt a comprehensive sunshine ordinance that would insure proper adherence to the Brown Act.
The councilwoman proposed such an ordinance during a March 19 meeting. After a discussion, the sunshine ordinance was to appear reworked on a future agenda, though it has yet to come back before the City Council.
Mayor pro tem has strong words for grand jury
Of the members of the Patterson City Council, Mayor Pro Tem Dominic Farinha publicly took the most umbrage with the civil grand jury’s findings.
“If the words and the tone and the content and the context were converted into water, it is so mild, you could give a newborn baby a bath in it,” he said. “The fact that they continue to investigate the city is not because they’re doing it on their own part. It’s because people that are so desperate to insert themselves into the process, they’ll listen to anyone and to anything.”
Farinha continued on to say that the grand jury is not as authoritative as some may think. “Time after time and time again, in this city and other cities, yes, they have found some wrong things,” he said.
“But largely that’s their opinion because none of them are really experts.”
The mayor pro tem closed out his comments by saying that it would help the city if people took a remedial course on what the Brown Act entails, implying that members of the grand jury took “extremist” views, with some of their interpretations of the legislation being “about as entertaining as a circus.”
Despite the city’s stance on the grand jury’s findings, language included in the response does not preclude the implementation of a new policy for future property purchases.
“The city will review and evaluate its internal procedures and update them as necessary for compliance with all applicable laws and regulations,” reads the response. “The city will then implement the policy for future property purchases. This will not necessarily include more bureaucracy in the form of a written policy and checklist.”
September 3, 2015
The Patterson Irrigastor.com
By Nathan Duckworth
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